Total Vision Efficiency is Vital for Top Performance: Discover how athletes focus on vision improvement to help their performance, says Dr. Jeffrey Eger

Many top professional and amateur athletes have a different definition of vision than the general public and work to enhance it for their most efficient performance. More than just hand-eye coordination, it encompasses the best performance using the least amount of time and energy in seven basic fundamental visual skills.

Eyesight: should be global.

Peripheral awareness: trained to be as close to 360 degrees as possible, to slow down real time in competition.

Near/far flexibility: accurate and ocular focusing, quickly and effortlessly, from distant to close.

Eye tracking: keeping our head still and moving the eyes efficiently up, down, left and right.

Eye-teaming, or binocularity: pointing our eyes quickly to an object or goal for correct depth perception and touch.

Localization in space: knowing where we are in our surroundings.

Visual imagery: using efficient visual memory and attitude.

This talent can be improved using custom-fitted contact lenses for global sight—a vision therapy program to train, condition and enhance skills using visual intuition and eliminating overthinking to establish instinctive trust in their performance. Players can virtually “slow down” objective time, seeing and reacting in another dimension of subjective time.

Baseball great Yogi Berra once said, “You can’t think and hit at the same time.” Too much thinking increases ocular and mental focusing (not trusting instinct), tightens up the whole body and leads to pulling or pushing strokes and possible injury.

Players want to be smart (visually efficient, instinctual or intuitive), not just intelligent. Those that overthink learn to miss important opportunities because they don’t trust what they see, nor are they first and foremost accomplished in the seven visual skills. They see the small/tight/doubt/worry/fear picture and go into an inefficient action mode. This is what we call hand-eye coordination. Mohammed Ali said it perfectly: ”Your hands can’t hit what your eyes don’t see.”

Dr. Jeffrey J. Eger is the owner of All American Sports Vision, in Mesa. For more information, phone 480-964-6672 or visit AllAmericanSportsVision.com.